Why independent bookstores strike fear into Germany’s culture czar Fatma Aydemir

THere there is a certain kind of danger that smells like paper and dust. Find it in independent bookstores. The one with the uneven wood floors and handwritten staff recommendations, where someone has shelved Audre Lorde next to Karl Marx and a debut novelist from Neukölln. Places where no algorithm tries to guess your identity before you have a chance to change your mind.

I go in for a novel, and leave with a theory about the state, a booklet about housing struggles, and a Palestinian poet I had never heard of before. There is no “For You” page in an online store that would suggest this. The bookseller did. Independent bookstores are dangerous because they interrupt us. They do not improve our curiosity. They are blocking it. Is this why the German Cultural Commissioner, Wolfram Weimar, now consults the local intelligence agency before approving funding for libraries?

Each year, the German Library Prize, awarded on behalf of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, is a financial injection for more than 100 independent, owner-operated libraries across Germany. An independent jury selects the winners, based on criteria such as carefully curated literary selection and cultural events. Usually, the public doesn’t pay much attention to the award; Its weight on the public treasury is hardly significant. But for small libraries operating on tight margins, prize money of between €7,000 and €25,000 makes a tangible difference.

This year, for the first time, three libraries disappeared from the jury list, According to an investigation by the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The statement said that the Ministry of Culture deleted it due to “information related to the domestic intelligence agency.” What kind of information? No one knows, not even the German Commissioner for Culture himself, because the domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) is not allowed to reveal it. A quick glance at the three libraries says: they are anti-fascist, they are proud of it, and they are institutions in their communities.

Germany’s literary scene is angry, and for good reason. Because what seems like a minor issue is actually another very disturbing intrusion into Germany’s cultural scene by Weimar. Last month, he made headlines when it was revealed that he was considering firing the director of the Berlin International Film Festival, Tricia Tuttle, because a director made a pro-Palestinian speech during the festival’s closing ceremony. After an open letter of protest, signed by nearly 700 international film directors, Weimar dropped the plan to fire Tuttle and instead imposed a “code of conduct” on the Berlinale and appointed an advisory board to oversee its future directorship. To many observers, this appears to be a clear repression of dissident artists.

By the way, Weimar is a publisher himself. He founded the conservative monthly magazine Cicero, whose signature themes were anti-wokeism and hostility to immigration. Weimar’s obsession is no secret – perhaps the reason why CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz appointed him as Commissioner for Culture and Media.

Shortly after taking office last year, Weimer called for A Ban gender-inclusive language in publicly funded institutions. He also urged the German film industry, which has traditionally enjoyed strong funding from cinemas, to produce more successful films, or, as he put it, “the desire of the audience, of the market, for things that actually work.” With no partisan political affiliation, Weimar avoids using words and phrases associated with the far right. But he is well aware that influence is most effective when it appears administrative. There’s no need to ban books if you can redefine what deserves support and funding.

That Weimar demanded information about libraries from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency was not only unusual; It is, to say the least, legally questionable.

The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz collects data of all kinds as part of its mission to monitor extremism. In practice, it functions largely as a black box. We simply do not know what type of information is being collected or why certain organizations are monitoring it. Did these bookstores sell the works of extremist thinkers? Did the informants identify them only as meeting places for the leftist scene? Or is the presence of an “ANTIFA” poster on the wall enough to warrant an investigation?

The libraries themselves apparently had no idea that the intelligence service was collecting data on them, and cannot respond meaningfully to these allegations – because the content of these allegations remains unknown. The three libraries are preparing to take legal action against “the secret interference of the German domestic intelligence agency,” according to a joint statement.

Whatever the charge against these bookstores, I’m sure they have behaved badly in the best possible way: recommending inappropriate books, hosting uncomfortable discussions, and allowing readers to encounter ideas they didn’t know they were ready for. If cultural policy begins to treat unpredictability as a reputational risk, we must be honest about what is at stake. It’s not extreme, it’s the simple, radical possibility of changing your mind. This was always the most dangerous work of all.

• Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist and playwright and a columnist for The Guardian Europe